"Sometime in the early Fifties ... assassination became an instrument of U.S. national policy. It also became an important branch of our invisible government, a sizable business, and a separate technology involving weapons and devices the ordinary taxpayer paid billions for but was never permitted to see, except perhaps in the technicolor fantasies of James Bond flicks." --Andrew St. George, journalist for Life magazine, Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation

"Young people often ask me whether I would recommend that they apply for a job at the CIA. I used to say, Only if you have high degrees of integrity and courage. Now I tell them that when they are asked to sign the secrecy agreement, they should emulate President George W. Bush by adding a signing statement -- the same kind of disclaimer the President issues when he signs legislation. Theirs might read, 'None of the above shall be construed as impinging on the undersigned's duty under U.S. and international law....'" --Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, Time magazine, 1 May 2006

"A great deal of the success of the CIA is due to its ability to attract patriotic, good soldiers who believe in the general rightness of what they do, and then insulate them through compartmentalization from the heavier activities." --John Stockwell, former CIA officer, The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order

"Everything is compartmentalized in the government. "A" doesn't know what "B" is always doing, because your given an order, 'OK. Your going to take this from point "A" to point "B."' That's all you know. You don't know the big picture. Your just operational ... at operational level, doing things that you're made to do." --Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota and Navy SEAL, interviewed on the Opie and Anthony Show, 8 April 2008

"A need to know operation is central, not only to the CIA, but for organized crime or anything else. The information is imparted to individuals on a need to know basis. If you try to inquire, just one time, if you show some curiosity, just one time, as to what is going on, then you won't be around. You'll either be dead, or you'll be ostracized. Not only is it isolation from top to bottom, but latterly as well." --Chaucey Holt, CIA contract agent and Mafia associate (also identified as one of the "three tramps" photographed in Dealey Plaza), interviewed by John Craig, Phillip Rogers and Gary Shaw for Newsweek magazine, 19 October 1991

"A lot of times you really didn't even know what the project was. You were told to go to a certain place and accomplish a certain thing. And if you didn't have a need to know, you didn't ask any questions." --Allen Cates, CIA pilot discussing Black Ops in the documentary, Air America: The CIA's Secret Airline

"Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation, it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation." --part of a 1962 declassified Pentagon document, code named Operation Northwoods, describing how pull off a false flag operation, under the U.S. democratic system, without being exposed

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.” - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged